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Epidemiology Meets Quantum: Statistics, Causality, and Bell's Theorem

1.
Statistical thinking in
“the experiment of the century”
• “If you need statistics, you did the wrong
experiment” – Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS (30 August 1871 – 19
October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who became known as
the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the
greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday

9.
John Bell explains: “I cannot say that action at a
distance is required in physics. But I cannot say that
you can get away with no action at a distance. You
cannot separate off what happens in one place with
what happens at another”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8CCfOD1iu8
Bell (1981) Bertlmann’s socks and the nature of reality

16.
Diamonds
Hanson's research group produces qubits using electrons in diamonds. ‘We use diamonds because ‘mini prisons’ for
electrons are formed in this material whenever a nitrogen atom is located in the position of one of the carbon atoms. The fact
that we're able to view these miniature prisons individually makes it possible for us to study and verify an individual electron
and even a single atomic nucleus. We're able to set the spin (rotational direction) of these particles in a predetermined state,
verify this spin and subsequently read out the data. We do all this in a material that can be used to make chips out of. This is
important as many believe that only chip-based systems can be scaled up to a practical technology,’ explains Hanson.
Holy Grail
Hanson is planning to repeat the experiment this summer over a distance of 1300 metres, with chips located in various
buildings on TU Delft's campus. This experiment could be the ﬁrst that meets the criteria of the 'loophole-free Bell test', and
could provide the ultimate evidence to disprove Einstein’s rejection of entanglement. Various research groups, including
Hanson's, are currently striving to be the ﬁrst to realise a loophole-free Bell test, which is considered 'Holy Grail' within
quantum mechanics.
Delft:
the Hanson diamond group
entanglement swapping
http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/beam-me-up-data/
29 May 2014

20.
Want to know more?
• http://www.slideshare.net/gill1109/epidemiology-
meets-quantum-statistics-causality-and-bells-
theorem
• http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~gill
• Survey paper in Statistical Science
30Jan2015
Statistical Science
2014, Vol. 29, No. 4, 512–528
DOI: 10.1214/14-STS490
c⃝ Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2014
Statistics, Causality and Bell’s Theorem
Richard D. Gill
Abstract. Bell’s [Physics 1 (1964) 195–200] theorem is popularly sup-
posed to establish the nonlocality of quantum physics. Violation of
Bell’s inequality in experiments such as that of Aspect, Dalibard and
Roger [Phys. Rev. Lett. 49 (1982) 1804–1807] provides empirical proof
of nonlocality in the real world. This paper reviews recent work on
Bell’s theorem, linking it to issues in causality as understood by statis-
ticians. The paper starts with a proof of a strong, ﬁnite sample, version
of Bell’s inequality and thereby also of Bell’s theorem, which states that
quantum theory is incompatible with the conjunction of three formerly
uncontroversial physical principles, here referred to as locality, realism and freedom.

21.
I cannot say that action at a distance is required in physics. But I cannot say
that you can get away with no action at a distance. You cannot separate off
what happens in one place with what happens at another – John Bell
Nature produces chance events (irreducibly chance-like!) which can occur
at widely removed spatial locations without anything propagating from point
to point along any path joining those locations. … The chance-like character
of these effects prevents any possibility of using this form of non locality to
communicate, thereby saving from contradiction one of the fundamental
principles of relativity theory according to which no communication can
travel faster than the speed of light – Nicolas Gisin
Postscript
Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels. Springer, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8CCfOD1iu8